Cosmic Romance
Marriage is the Entire Point
“I do not believe God created an egalitarian world. I believe the authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple, to have been as much a part of the original plan as the authority of man over beast.” -C.S. Lewis, Membership
For my money, C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength is the greatest novel of the twentieth century, other than The Lord of the Rings. It is a story about resisting demonic power, about God toppling the demonic order through small acts of personal righteousness in the humblest of characters. In that sense, it shares a soul with Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. As Tolkien put it,
“Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”
At the end of That Hideous Strength, Lewis decides to end his story in a way that strikes many readers as strange, or even anti-climactic. The story has taken the reader through cosmic, ideological battles of eternal significance, but it ends quietly, in a return to the marital relationship of our two main characters. Mark Studdock returns to his wife, who the book implies is waiting for him, and for the first time since we’ve known our characters, waiting expectantly and with love. What is the significance of ending this tale with marital intimacy, restored marital intimacy?
The marriage of Mark and Jane Studdock is what the entire story is about, even in our own world. Marriage is something cosmically significant. Marriage, to put it simply, is the entire point.
“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.”
-Ephesians 5, ESV
Paul here is telling us something about the nature of reality.
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
-Genesis 2:24, ESV
One Flesh
The book of Genesis tells us that when a man and woman are married, they become one flesh. Just as men and women are clearly and obviously “made” for one another in an anatomical way, so Christ’s bride is made for Him and sanctified by Him to be His bride.
As the Church, we don’t merely belong to Christ, we are in Christ, and He in us. We are joined to Him spiritually, deeply, and naturally. And our human marriages reflect that – Christian or not. Our human binding of one man to one woman images the relationship between Christ and His people. It’s more than a commitment, more than affection, more even than love. It is a unity. Two, become one.
This means that the roles of a husband and wife flow from our nature, not the other way around. Paul forbids women from the pastoral office on grounds of nature, of reality, of created order, not anything social or even pragmatic. Women are not only not allowed to lead the church, they are unable. Not because of worth or dignity, but because of the natural order. Our natures are innate; they are “baked-in.” Men are to lead, and women are to submit and nurture. When we embody those natural roles in marriage, we are simply aligning ourselves to the natural reality presented to us.
The phrase “become one flesh” in scripture is inherently a sexual phrase. To give oneself to another sexually is not mere biology, and it’s not only physical. Sex binds two people together. When two people come together in sexual union, they are exposing not only their bodies, but their souls to one another. It’s why Hebrews says:
“Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”
Hebrews 13:4, ESV
To fornicate in the early church was to banish oneself from God’s people. Perverse sexual practices like orgies, homosexuality, and general promiscuity have always marked pagan religions. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has read Genesis 6. Even today, the stories we tell about the way demons interact with humans are inherently sexual. From Rosemary’s Baby to The Exorcist to Dracula, we know on a deep level that these things are connected.
Contrary to the popular materialistic understanding of human nature, sex is not simply an urge to reproduce. It is a spiritual act, which is why Lewis so brilliantly ends his cosmically significant story with a marriage – a restored marriage, the rekindled marriage bed of a love gone cold.
Brides and Grooms
Mark and Jane Studdock find new life in their loveless marriage only after they have been joined to the Bride of Christ. And once they are in Christ, they each must individually repent of what is essentially spiritual transgenderism. Mark has been an indecisive, nervous man, spineless for the sake of social acceptance, and has neglected leading and protecting his wife. And Jane is herself unsubmissive, focused on career outside the home rather than life within it. These sins are everywhere in our culture today, and they start with the head. Mark is ultimately responsible for the state of his marriage and household, and cannot tell God, as Adam tried to do, that the woman is at fault.
When Mark and Jane each encounter Christ, they are forced to take up their natural mantle. For Mark, he must stand up for what he believes in. To refuse to submit, perhaps for the first time, to the will of those in power. He girds his loins, and acts like a man. Jane must submit, for the first time, to a will higher than her own. And then, only after she has submitted to Christ, she submits to her husband. Being united to Christ, both characters then find that their uniting to one another is given new life. For each of us, our marriages are the battleground where the conflict plays out.
“That hierarchical inequality, the need for self surrender, the willing sacrifice of self to others, hold sway in the realm beyond Nature. It is indeed only love that makes the difference: all those very same principles which are evil in the world of selfishness and necessity are good in the world of love and understanding.”
― C.S. Lewis, Miracles
The Stories We Tell
God is a storyteller, and every story we tell as human beings will point, in some way, to the one true myth – the true myth of the husband who comes to redeem His bride, forgive her, protect her, and end the tale with a marriage supper. That’s the story we are in.
This is what Lewis portrays so masterfully in his story: that Mark and Jane are both sinners, but with opposite sins, each as a mirror image of the other. They repent in opposite directions. Jane abandons her feminism and submits, Mark abandons his abdicating weakness and leads. It leads to their marriage itself being restored, and it culminates in Mark returning home, to his wife expectantly waiting for him, spiritual union restored. This is the beautiful story of our own reality, and the one God loves to tell it.
When the culture around you attempts to peddle the lie that a marriage is nothing more than a social contract rather than a covenant, or that roles are mere external obligations, or that they are interchangeable, or that women are made to lead just like men, remember what is true. Remember the character you play. The story we inhabit is not a flat one of cubicles and fluorescent lights and egalitarian platitudes. It’s a story where knights slay dragons to rescue a pure bride, where men stand up to giants to protect a people, where women grow life itself in their own bodies, where each of us has a part to play. Don’t let the demon gods convince you that natural roles are limiting, demeaning, or oppressive. They’re simply the place you find yourself, so live in them with courage and joy.